“Come to the show and find out in person,” Owen interrupted. “Bring your man bear. Ryan’s coming, we can all hang out as a group.”
“That sounds awesome!” Autumn was so excited at the idea of being in a group once more, she leapt off her barstool and ran toward Blake, who was still weaving his way through clusters of drunk businessmen. Throwing aside all dignity, she wrapped her arms around his waist and hugged him tight.
“Hey, how are you? Thanks for coming! Are you free on Sunday night?”
Blake frowned at her. “Are you drunk?”
“No. A bit. Yes,” she admitted. “But more importantly, are you free on Sunday? It’s very important that you tell me now because I want you to come hang out with us at Isabella’s performance thing. It’s perfect third date material, a group of us all hanging ou—”
Blake picked her up and kissed her, not a big kiss but enough to make her eyes close and her knees quiver. Enough that she completely forgot where she was. He pulled away and smiled at her, his expression very soft. “Hey.”
“Uh, hey,” Autumn whispered, more than a little dizzy. “What was that for?”
Blake put her back on her feet. “I need a reason to kiss you?”
“No it’s just…” She felt herself flush and refused to finish that sentence with ‘you said you didn’t like PDA and it seemed like you really wanted to kiss me.’ “Come meet my friends. Or meet Isabella, seeing as you’ve already met Owen. My New York City friend stock has risen to three and I am loving it.”
She grabbed his hand and began tugging him toward the table. Blake, of course, didn’t budge an inch. “Hang on, Fun-Size, does the table need drinks? And who’s your third friend?”
“I adopted another pigeon Blake and this time it’s for real.” Autumn laughed at the horrified look on his face. “It’s you, you big silly landlord. You’re my third mate.”
Maybe it was the pigeon joke but Blake didn’t seem very impressed by this.
“I’m going to the bar,” he said, his mouth turned down at the corners. “I’ll get a pitcher of something.”
It turned out to be a pitcher of white wine sangria, which went down amazingly well. Autumn had been nervous about introducing Blake, a self-confessed recluse with no social skills to a wider circle of company but he was completely at ease with Owen and Isabella. He didn’t talk very much, true, but he asked a lot of questions and he and Isabella immediately struck up a strong/silent type rapport. There was still a slight tension between him and Owen, but not an unfriendly one. Autumn guessed it was a kind of manly rivalry with some competitive nuances thrown in. Also, Owen probably hadn’t forgiven him for fucking up his ‘Modern day Beauty and The Beast’ story. Still, the conversation flowed and one round of white wine sangria merged into a second. Before long she was feeling pretty damn tipsy. It was only when Isabella asked if she and Blake were still going out alone or if they wanted to join them for karaoke in Alphabet City that Autumn realized it was nine o’clock and they’d been at the bar for hours.
She was keen for karaoke but since Blake looked like he would rather saw through his own foot, she cheerfully declined. After agreeing that he would join them again for Isabella’s performance at the Essence theatre, Blake hustled her out of the bar and into the cool evening air.
“That was fun, wasn’t it?” she asked. “I had a lot of fun. You and Owen and Isabella are very fun.”
“Well, we are your three mates.”
“Hey, don’t tease me for only having three mates. Or saying the word ‘mate.’ It’s an important part of my culture.”
“I’m not teasing you, Autumn.”
She scrutinized his face under a passing street lamp and decided he definitely looked grumpy. Or grumpier. “What’s wrong, Blake the snake?”
He turned and stared unblinkingly at her.
“Okay, I won’t ever call you that again, but seriously, are you mad at me? Is it because I’m drunk? Because that might be your fault for ordering delicious sangria and then getting a refill. It was generous and charming, but did you ever stop and think who would drink it all? And that that person would definitely be me?”
Blake snorted. “I guess I didn’t. Let’s get you something to eat.”
Without waiting for her response Blake stopped and bought two hot dogs from a nearby vendor. Autumn had been feeling a bit snacky after all the drinks and happily accepted her fake meat product. A minute later it was gone. She was just going to ask him for a bite of his when Blake stopped to buy her a pretzel with the seemingly infinite bundle of cash he kept in his wallet.
“Where do you keep getting all this money?” she demanded. “And you know you don’t have to keep feeding me, right?”
“I get money from ATM’s like everyone else and you were eyeing my hot dog like a rabid raccoon.” Blake handed her the salt studded pastry. “I’ll buy you all the food you can eat, Fun-Size, but I draw the line at sharing.”
Autumn bit into the pretzel. “Fargh enoghff.”
They walked in silence for a bit, eating their street food when Autumn realized she had no freaking idea where they were going. “Where are you taking me this time, The Landlord? Opera? Hot air balloon racing? Drug deal?”
“We’re going to the park.”
“Like… to break up an illegal dog fighting ring?”
Blake frowned at her. “Sometimes I worry about what goes on inside your head. No. We’re just going to the park.”
“That’s fine, I guess.” She stared at the ice cream food truck parked on the opposite side of the road and instantly Blake was gripping her arm and steering her toward it.
“At least let me pay for this one,” she protested. “I want to get four different flavours and I’ll feel bad about making you spend too much, otherwise.”
“Are you forgetting about the two-hundred-dollar gold leaf cake?”
“Why? Why do you always remind me of that? Whyyyy?”
He chuckled. “It’s always funny to see your reaction. Get as many flavors as you want.”
Fifteen minutes and a banana, chocolate, peppermint, cherry, rainbow ice cream later, they were in the park. It was large and not nearly as nice as the more touristy commons Autumn had been to. The stone benches were covered in graffiti and the flowerbeds were weedy and overgrown.
Everything had a slightly ominous look, yet she could observe all of them without the slightest trace of fear because of the man next to her. Nothing bad was going to happen while Blake was there. Not only was he the size of a pyramid, he was hyper-alert, always scanning the perimeter for possible risks and guiding her into his side whenever anyone remotely dodgy approached. He was like a huge, free bodyguard who was also an incredible fuck.
“What do you think?” Blake asked.
“I think you’re like a huge, free bodyguard who’s also an incredible fuck.”
He grinned, the spread of color on his cheeks obvious even through the beard. “Maybe you’re not so bad drunk.”
And maybe you’re not so bad ever, she wanted to add, but chomped the last of her ice cream cone instead. Her mushy, gold tinted feelings for her landlord were becoming harder to fight down. She didn’t believe Owen, she wasn’t, couldn’t be in love with Blake, but the feelings, the ones that stole her sleep and made her chest ache, were getting harder to hold in.
He led her to a park bench on the edge of the perimeter, apparently placed so that visitors could stare intently at the thick bull brush hedge.
“Terrible place for a park bench,” Autumn commented.
“The view isn’t important.” Blake sat down, pulling her onto his lap. “What do you think of the place?”
“It’s very…” Autumn scanned the park, trying to come up with adjectives that weren’t ‘unkempt’ or ‘random.’ “Private.”
“It is. Which is exactly what I wanted.”
Autumn put a hand on his chest. “Hold on, I don’t want to give you more examples of my true-crime brain, but are you going to murder me toni
ght, Landlord? Choke me out so no one can discover you’ve been illegally fucking me in exchange for free pigeon meat?”
He scowled at her. “No.”
“Well, that’s a relief.” Autumn shifted in his lap and felt a hot heavy weight she’d grown very familiar with over the past month.
“If that’s the case, is there perhaps another, more sexful reason for bringing me here…” she leaned in close to his ear, “…owner?”
She had the satisfaction of hearing Blake’s strained grunt, feeling him thicken between her legs. He was more responsive to her than any man she’d ever met. It seemed like everything she did turned him on—something she’d been exploiting on an almost nightly basis. His large hands closed around her hips, fisting the flowy knee length skirt she’d worn to the bar. She closed her eyes for a kiss, but it never came.
She opened her eyes and saw Blake shaking his head. “Much as I’d love to play, that isn’t why I brought you here. I’ve decided you’re going to perform your routine for me.”
At first Autumn thought he meant a striptease routine. She was all set to tell him that she was an incredibly shitty dancer and wouldn’t do that kind of thing even if they weren’t in a freaking park, when she realized he meant comedy, and that was even worse. “No fucking way.”
Blake let go of her skirt. “Not an option, Fun-Size. You want to pay me back for all the food I’ve bought you, you’ll do your routine.”
Her mouth fell open in horror. “Paying for my food was a sincere gesture of gentlemanliness!”
“And now I’m using it to get something out of you. I want to see that routine, Blondie, stand up.”
When she refused, he gently hoisted her onto her feet. “Come on honey, just do it. I promise not to heckle you.”
Autumn gaped at him. “You can’t seriously be—”
“I am. Routine. Now.”
“But it has singing and music and I don’t have my Casio keyboard!”
“Do it without the keyboard.”
“But it’ll be embarrassing!”
Blake rolled his eyes. “I already told you. There’s no one here but me.”
“Sure, you do realize you’re the most intimidating cunt on earth, right? Ian used to avoid going to the mailbox whenever you were in the lobby.”
Blake gave a little snort of derision but didn’t say anything. Autumn felt a hot wash of discomfort. They hadn’t spoken about the dick pic thing since it had happened but she’d noticed a renewed possessiveness about her lover. He held her hand whenever they walked together and when they were playing in her bed last week, Blake had kept her orgasm at bay until she screamed that he owned her pussy. It had been hot and completely in keeping with their role play, but it also felt like a fuck-you to the man who used to live there. Ian, for his part, hadn’t sent any more messages and Autumn lived in hope that he had really, truly, given up on her and gone off in search of greener groupie pastures.
Oh, Ian. The thought of what he would say if he found out she wanted to do stand-up and had actually performed a routine in the park made Autumn’s skin crawl. She wasn’t the funny one. So few people were the funny one. Stand-up comedy was one of those things everyone imagined themselves excelling at; like writing a novel or winning a quiz show, but only ten percent would ever do it and one percent would do it well. She wasn’t the one percent, not in terms of money and not in terms of this. “Blake, I can’t do my routine for you. I mean it.”
“Yeah you can.”
Autumn held up her hands. “Okay, let’s compromise. How about…and this is just a suggestion, we kill ourselves, instead?”
He frowned. “Don’t say shit like that.”
“But I’m scared!”
“Of what?”
“Seriously, man you barely smile and I have literally never heard you lol. You’re a stand-up comic’s worst nightmare. I don’t know if I can do a single bit of it without freaking the fuck out!”
Blake scratched the bridge of his nose. “Okay, what about this, you go behind the park bench and perform. That way I won’t be looking at you. How does that sound?”
That would be better, she thought and then stomped on the idea. “No. I can’t do it.”
Blake leaned forward, clasping his hands between his knees as he looked at her. “Fun-Size, I saw the way you looked at the poster for the open mic night. You spent, what, hours? Days, preparing a routine that no one’ll ever see? Why would you bother to do that if you didn’t think that someday someone would hear it?”
“I don’t know.”
“I do. I think you want to perform and you’re scared. That’s understandable, but if you don’t push yourself, you’ll regret it some day.”
That was a good point. Autumn scuffed the toe of her flat in the dirt. She knew however bad she was, Blake wouldn’t tease or hold her routine against her, he wasn’t that kind of guy. And she had to admit there was a squirming jellybean of excitement inside her, something that did want to perform, if only to see what it was like.
“Tell me something embarrassing about yourself,” she demanded. “We’ll call it the price of admission.”
Blake didn’t even hesitate. “I fell asleep in history class in middle school. Woke up with an erection. My friend Kevin saw and almost pissed his pants laughing.”
She laughed. She couldn’t help it. It was just too endearing to picture the mortification on a young Blake’s face.
“Okay,” she said, walking around the park bench to face Blake’s back. “I’ll start now. If you still want to see my routine. You don’t have to see it. We could just go home and fuck, you know.”
“We’re doing that either way. Go.”
“Fine.” She took a deep breath, and knowing that it would be easier to just start and keep going, she began. It wasn’t hard to remember the words. She’d long since committed every letter to memory.
“Hi everyone, I’m Autumn Reynolds and I’ll be making you glad you’re not following your dreams tonight.”
Blake chuckled.
Autumn pointed a furious finger at the back of his head. “Don’t you fucking token laugh at me, man!”
He waved a big hand in the air. “Keep going.”
“So I’m not trained in comedy law, a thing that I don’t think exists and if it exists, definitely shouldn’t exist. I am a practicing vet. Yes, that’s right, if your dog can’t shit out that Lego brick, I’m the girl who can help you out.”
Blake laughed again and the sound was like balm to Autumn’s nervous system because she could tell, really tell that he wasn’t faking. Her skin tingled all over and her belly became hot and tight. This wasn’t pleasurable the way ice cream or an orgasm was pleasurable, it was too sharp, too terrifying, but, it felt so, so good. She cleared her throat. “Yeah you might laugh, but that is seriously what I spend my days doing. I studied for seven years, spent thousands of dollars and my main thing is extracting small toys from the bowels of overweight golden retrievers. Some people get upset when I say that. They ask ‘surely there’s more to it than that?’ and I say ‘yeah, you ever see “Marley and Me?’” That’s every day of my fucking life man, just watching kids and grown men cry as I exterminate their beloved family pets. Sometimes I feel like I signed up to be an apprentice of the grim fucking reaper…”
As she talked, Autumn could feel her voice growing louder, more confident, falling into the familiar clicks and grooves she’d rehearsed so many times in her bedroom and lounge room, or on her way home from work. She wasn’t perfect, she forgot a couple of lines, but it didn’t matter, the spiky energy flowing through her continued and when she finished and took a bow to Blake’s tumultuous applause, she was grinning from ear to ear. “That felt amazing.”
“It sounded even better,” Blake said and she could hear his smile in his voice.
“I only did it because of you. You made me feel all of this. Can I come give you a hug?”
“You better.”
Unable to contain a girlish squeal of over-e
xcitement, Autumn dashed around the bench and threw herself into Blake’s arms. He caught her, pulling her close to his beefy chest. “I’m so proud of you. You were so clever. So brave.”
“Did you like the thing I said about lizards?” Autumn asked. “You didn’t think it was too dumb?”
“Not at all.” He kissed her forehead. “I think you should call Netflix and see if you can get a special.”
“I don’t care about that, I just can’t believe I actually said my whole routine out loud in front of another person!” Autumn buried her burning face in his shirt. “You promise you really liked it?”
“I did. And if you wanted to perform it facing me, I’d be happy to hear it again.”
But the glow of having successfully completed a stand-up comedy routine was already starting to fade in the presence of being so close to Blake. It was insane to think she’d hung out with him for a little over a month. He’d not only met her friends tonight but bought her a hot dog and laughed at her jokes. God, she would miss him if she went home. She allowed a little of the mushy feelings to slip through and ask how she’d manage go back to a life filled with men who talked all the time and never pushed her to do new things. The thought was so terrifying, she kissed Blake hard, trying to prove that he was there and she didn’t need to worry. Their mouths molded perfectly—no longer strangers to what the other liked. As she sank deeper into his hips she again felt the thick swell of his cock. “Tell me you didn’t get that from my jokes?”
“You’re funny, but no one’s that funny.”
She laughed, rolling her hips against him. “You know we’re still all on our lonesome, Mr. Landlord?”
“I might have noticed.” His hand rose and wound itself into her hair. “You shouldn’t be out here so late at night, Blondie. There’s a lot of bad men around, they might get the wrong idea.”
Autumn felt the familiar arousal that came from Blake all hot and raspy in her ear, but to her surprise, she didn’t have the same anticipation. She opened her mouth. Closed it again.
“What?” he said at once. “Say it.”
She licked her lips, stupidly nervous for some reason. “Can we just do it like, normal? I mean, not normal, but vanilla? Like maybe I could go on top and ride your dick?” She made a face. “Sorry that’s not the sexiest thing in the worl—”
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